Allahabad HC Orders Two UPTET Questions With Two Accepted Answers Excluded, Extending Benefit Beyond Candidates Who Chose Them

The petitioners challenged the evaluation of UPTET-2026 after the final answer key accepted two options as correct for Question Nos. 36 and 37 of the Master Set.

The Commission awarded marks only to candidates who had selected either accepted option; the petitioners had not selected one of those options, and each scored below the applicable qualifying threshold.

Although the petition originally sought consequential marks, petitioners’ counsel confined the case to whether the questions should be excluded from evaluation or equal marks awarded to all candidates.

The petitioners relied, in particular, on the Allahabad High Court’s earlier decision in Smt. Shimla Singh v. State of U.P.; the Commission opposed relief, including on the grounds that the petitioners had not objected to the provisional key and that the earlier decision was inconsistent with other authority.

The Court applied the principles governing judicial review of answer keys in Ran Vijay Singh v. State of U.P., including the presumption of correctness of the key and the availability of exclusion as a remedy for an offending question.

It relied on Uttar Pradesh Subordinate Service Selection Commission v. Ashok Yadav, which recognizes that a question admitting two correct answers when only one is to be selected may be excluded from evaluation.

Under Rishal v. Rajasthan Public Service Commission, where questions are deleted, the paper is treated as comprising the remaining questions and the result is revised consistently for candidates affected by the defective key.

The Court also applied Smt. Shimla Singh v. State of U.P., which treated UPTET as a qualifying rather than inter-se competitive examination and directed uniform treatment of candidates where questions had multiple correct answers.

It further relied on Rajesh Kumar v. State of Bihar for the writ court’s power to mould relief to address a defective evaluation process.

The examination was conducted under the NCTE TET guidelines, which prescribe a qualifying standard while permitting concessions under applicable policies.

The Commission’s own final key established that each disputed question had two accepted answers, so the issue was not a judicial reassessment of academic correctness but the fairness of the evaluation method.

The Court held that awarding marks only to candidates who selected one of the accepted options improperly made the result depend on a choice in a question that lacked a single correct answer.

Excluding both questions would instead treat candidates uniformly, consistent with Ashok Yadav, Ran Vijay Singh, and Smt. Shimla Singh.

The Commission’s exclusion of Question No. 38 in the same examination further supported applying the same approach to Questions 36 and 37.

The Court directed that the paper be treated as comprising 148 questions, with the qualifying standard computed at the prescribed percentage.

It directed the respondents to recompute the petitioners’ scores and correct their results and scorecards as necessary.

The order clarified that correction of the UPTET result did not itself confer any right to appointment or selection in a subsequent recruitment process.

The writ petition was disposed of accordingly.